Underworld Market

This is the best card ever printed. Every guardian who has ever run Prepared for the Worst on Stick to the Plan should immediately understand the significance of a side deck that can be stacked with weapons.

In a normal deck, you would hard mulligan for a weapon and forgo most economy cards, but with Underworld Market you can safely mulligan however you want. Let's say you choose to run 6 illicit weapons in a rogue deck, which could include any of (Chicago Typewriter, Beretta M1918 , Colt Vest Pocket, .41 Derringer, Switchblade, etc.). If you put all of them into your market deck and 0 into your main deck, the odds that you do not see a weapon in the first two turns are:

(4/10)x(3/9)x(2/8)x(1/7)x100% = 0.48%

In other words, without focusing on mulliganing at all you can reliably draw a weapon within the first two turns 99.5% of the time. Going a step further, if you choose to make 100% of your illicit deck cards weapons, you can guarantee a weapon draw in your opening hand.

Separately, combo decks that might work off of cards like Fence or Pickpocketing can now reliably be drawn within the first five turns of the game. This is incredible given that the Rogue class struggles a lot with card draw. Effectively you can run a deck that does not have to worry about its starting hand and can now solely mulligan for economy cards like Faustian Bargain, 21 or Bust, or...whatever the other Rogue cards are.

All of this is nice, but what takes this card from nice to incredible is the fact that both abilities on this card are reaction triggers, meaning that you do not have two reveal the top cards of your illicit deck if you don't want to. Let's say you know what the top two cards are and don't want to reveal them since it would change the order of cards in the illicit deck, well, since this is a reaction trigger, you can simply choose not to.

All in all, this card means that you can effectively guarantee that your primary card type is drawn (weapon, utility, Colt Vest Pocket, etc), while simultaneously allowing you to stack your deck in favor of important cards.

9/30/22

SorryLaurie · 527

Your maths doesn't do it justice. For 6 weapons the only situation where you don't see a weapon by turn 2 is 4/10 * 3/9 * 2/8 * 1/7 which is 1/504 or less than 0.2% — NarkasisBroon · 10 9/30/22

No, I messed up as well :-P 24/504 — NarkasisBroon · 10 9/30/22

Ahhh stupid enter... 24/5040 = 0.48%... for real this time. Final answer — NarkasisBroon · 10 9/30/22

Ah yep - thank you! — SorryLaurie · 527 9/30/22

That is detail but to be sure to see a gun on turn 1, you only need 9 guns since it shows 2 cards at once. Alternatively, that also helps tremendously with the « Lockpicks at the bottom » syndrom, since investigating rogues are even more relying on their (illicit) tools to function properly. — Valentin1331 · 56368 9/30/22

I love the card too. The question I have is if you buy this card during the campaign, do you have to buy the extra 10 cards? That makes it a whopping 14XP with only level 0-1 cards... — nonobstant · 11 10/16/22

You do not. If your deck ever falls below its required size either by increasing deck size or exiling a card, you can fill those empty slots with level 0 cards at no cost. See: https://arkhamdb.com/rules#Exile — SorryLaurie · 527 10/16/22

What happens if I buy this and fill my deck up with level 0 cards and only 4 of the 40 cards in my deck are illicit? Does my market deck only have 4 cards in it? — belphagor · 7 10/20/22

I think arguably that means you just can't trigger its ability, on rereading. "Choose 10..." is part of a cost, so... — Lailah · 1 10/20/22

Right - if you increase deck size and choose not to add 10, then you cannot make the illicit deck, but I think the above questions was about the cost of those 10 cards in terms of experience. — SorryLaurie · 527 10/22/22

Ope - missed the follow-up, Lailah is right. — SorryLaurie · 527 10/22/22

Guys One big important question, does this card trigger astounding revelation? — Shuruikan · 7 12/1/22

It does not — Nenananas · 242 12/5/22

If I use this card and happen to need to discard a card from the market after use, does that card go back to the bottom of the market pile? Or the discard pile? — Maegic · 1 12/18/22

The Discard pile. Once a card is drawn from the Illicit deck, it's treated the same as any other card in your investigator's deck, and goes to the Discard pile after use. — Telosa · 44 12/28/22

Does anyone know how to handle getting ArkhamDB's upgrade/edit functions to respect the rule cited by SorryLaurie above? That is, I'm buying Underwrold Market after my first scenario, but ArkhamDB is still charging me 1 point per level 0 card I want to add to pad out the deck to full size. Or does the rule only apply to padding the deck after a loss of a card due to exile, specifically? https://arkhamdb.com/rules#Exile — rleduc · 1 2/6/23

Sorry to add - this is under Deck in the FAQ: — rleduc · 1 2/6/23

(Added in FAQ, section 'Game Play', point 1.18) If 1 or more cards are forcibly removed from an investigator’s deck and returned to the collection (such as when a card is exiled, or when a campaign effect forces an investigator to remove cards from their deck), that investigator must purchase cards so that a legal deck size is maintained. When purchasing cards in this manner, that investigator may purchase level 0 cards at 0 experience cost until a legal deck size is reached. This rule also applies if an effect alters an investigator’s deck size, deckbuilding restrictions, or deckbuilding options such that 1 or more cards must be removed from or added to their deck as a result — rleduc · 1 2/6/23

After the 1st , the market deck is not ever shuffled again. Therefore you will slowly gain open information about the order of cards in your market deck (and able to nudge the ordering little by little), to full information in 5 rounds of consecutive 2nd use.

A trick that helps making use of this card to the fullest is to not face down the cards you arranged and put on the bottom, so in 5 rounds you have a market deck that is fully revealed and you can inspect the ordering at anytime. (I believe it is not cheating as it is equivalent to jotting down the moving order on scrap paper.)

Round 6 onwards you can selectively trigger the 2nd with clearer overhead view of the market :

Cycle the market without reordering to have a good card waiting on the top 2 of market deck. (You can browse the entire market where the good stuff is, having revealed them all.)
Try to arrange such that one of 3rd or 4th card combo with one of top 2 cards.
If you lack 1 resource or hand space to purchase, just stop using 2nd to have the market wait indefinitely.

Some more observation after having used this card :

1 resource to purchase feels heavy enough, that I don't want too many of my Illicit key pieces to be all in the market. This card serves "tutor" and "situational skip" function. For tutoring, too many pieces you need to purchase consecutively from the market hurt the tempo, compared to having a half of combo coming up naturally from the deck. I have to focus on designing a combo between Illicit and non-Illicit cards too.
There is also a problem if you purposefully left some Illicit in the normal deck, since you need more Illicit to make up 10 cards to trigger the 1st to form the market on game's start.
Allow more Skill cards in the deck space after you offloaded Illicit Asset and Event onto the market deck, since Skill cards are better drawn normally and be ready for commit especially on late game.

1/8/23

5argon · 7780

Are you allowed to put Finn's signatures in the Underworld Market Deck? 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200

2/7/23

SE13SEB · 27

You should consider asking these questions somewhere else. The 200 character requirement is in place partially because these are meant to be reviews of the cards, not rules questions about them. — SSW · 206 2/7/23

As a complement, BoardGameGeek's forum or Reddit are good places to ask these questions as other users can find them easily with google later :) — Valentin1331 · 56368 2/7/23

Okay thanks guys, will do! — SE13SEB · 27 2/8/23

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